Parallel Spirals

Standing on the shores of space-time…

Blog

  • I’m now a Zoo Keeper!

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://blogs.seds.org/pradeep. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on July 11, 2007 as per the timestamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    I saw today in my feed reader that GalaxyZoo is open to the general public one day before it was supposed to open. More coverage here.

    I registered today..took the test..passed….I’m now a ZooKeeper (self-assigned title)!!

    I always wanted to do this, it’s almost as if someone was reading my mind. 🙂 Register today but you can’t do any work on it today as their circuits are overloaded. Already 🙂 Everything starts with the Big Bang!

    Update1: Here are some blog posts talking about GalaxyZoo –

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  • Big Bang and the seconds before it

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://blogs.seds.org/pradeep. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on July 2, 2007 as per the timestamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    I’ll just give a small brief description here since the Bad Astronomer has already elaborated. Also, the official news post of the story is here.

    Till now, our mathematics limited our predictions to the slices of seconds ahead of the actual moment of the Big Bang. Now, it seems, Martin Bojowald, an assistant professor of physics at Penn State University has broken through this barrier to predict what happened at the exact moment of the Big Bang and the moments before it. He did this using (and he’s still working on it) what’s called the Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG for short). In-depth details in the links above.

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  • Poor man’s guide to Astrophotography

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://blogs.seds.org/pradeep. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on June 30, 2007 as per the timestamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    Dr. Suresh Mohan is one of the few Indian astrophotographers work that I have witnessed in the recent past through the astronomyclubsindia mailing list.

    He recently posted an email on a poor man’s guide to astrophotography. Just thought I’d mention it here via a link.The site is also a good resource for more things astrophotography.

    Hope it helps. Hat tip to Dr. Suresh Mohan.

     

     

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  • India’s first military satellite and my thoughts

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://blogs.seds.org/pradeep. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on June 29, 2007 as per the timestamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    I am not a big fan of the militarization of space and also can’t get to spell it properly. So, I was not too happy when I read this.

    India’s first military satellite – CARTOSAT-2A is going to be launched on the PSLV sometime in August.

    I was so happy that India has been using space for peaceful purposes for so long and despite so many roadblocks put in by the US and Europe. So, it seemed like this was a bit odd. But, not really. What dictates this is basically geo-politics and not the people of our country.

    China and Pakistan seems to be what this satellite would be looking at. Basically. And they’re watching them for our own protection. So, doesn’t really make sense to rant about that.

    The launch of CARTOSAT 2A has been timed to coincide with the scheduled delivery of the country’s first airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft by Israel. So, basically we get the whole range from the ground to the stratosphere. It’s good to keep all the bases covered. Just in case.

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  • SEDSAT-2 Update

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://blogs.seds.org/pradeep. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on June 26, 2007 as per the timestamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    I thought now that I don’t have to submit a darn long essay to ISRO since I’m out, I can settle down and think about what has happened with SEDSAT2 all this time. These are my personal opinions..and all that.

    SEDSAT2 started out in mid-November about two weeks before my semester exams. Cool no?

    Before I could even decide whether I should participate in the project, the wiki page, the mailing list and all were setup. So, all I had to do was join in. We had a very small but great team of people who came together to begin thinking on this project – Chris, Kirk, Tom, Geoff, Michael, ME and Lavina. It was we who finally (after many delays) finally put our heads together and wrote the paper which basically said – yes, this crazy idea is possible.

    To describe this crazy idea – we are thinking of designing and building a cubesat (a 10×10 cms 1 kg satellite orignially designed by CalPoly) but not in one university but by linking through a string of universities all throughout the world. The major aim of the project was also to take a look at how international collaboration projects in space look like at the student level of things. The idea, as I have mentioned above was crazy to say the least.

    But the more we thought about it, the more we believed that it could be done.

    So, we invited people via mailing lists to submit their applications to become members of the team and boy, did we have a great response – 30 people from 12 countries.

    In between all of the babble, we finally defined our goal –

    to build a cubesat using international collaboration

    small and sweet, no?

    Also, we got a lot of support from SEDS alumni like Chris, Aaron and Kirk. Aaron gave us a software that he’s being putting together which he calls ProtoForge. Protoforge is sort of like a check list which helps us with our thinking and also makes sure we are following logically and helps us manage our “huge” team. It’s great thing to have on a satellite project.

    Fast forward to the present, I’m now looking after the structures team on SEDSAT2. I’ve brushed up on all the basics that I might get hit by and hope that I’m now prepared to read more complicated stuff. Hmm..I think that’s it for now…

  • Sem V studies begin

    I joined tutorials for Fluid Mechanics (FM) and Data Structures and Arrays (DSA) today. These are two subjects out of 6 that a mechanical engineering undergraduate has to study in order to get his bachelor’s degree.

    Both subjects are thought to be tough along with Heat and Mass Transfer (HMT). Let’s see. College is scheduled to re-open on the 16th of July.

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  • New Stuff…

    I just signed up for emurse.com (some resume generator) and tumblr.com (a tumblog).

    Both are strange things for me here in India but I have decided to give both a try. While, I’m still thinking about what to put in my resume, I have a ton of stuff to put on my tumblog.

    For the uninitiated, if a blog is a journal/diary, a tumblog is a scrapbook where you post on tumblr.com (like wordpress.com). You can post videos, chat transcripts, cool websites, text, pics and I haven’t looked any further.

    Will give both a test-run.

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  • Water and Wind

    It’s been raining heavily here for the past two days. The roads are a wreck with branches, overflowing drains et. all. Still people are on their way to work.

    We only have Sunday’s off and on that day the rains got pretty heavy. It’s not as if you can’t go out because of the rains. You can’t go off because the winds might break the heavy water laden branches just hanging on their edges.

    Want to make a bag? Try this. (I know it’s totally unrelated)

    And some more, I went upto Dadar today morning in the bus and Bombay looks great and lush green for a change. No stink, now overflowing drains. BMC has also managed to clear the King’s Circle stretch which gets flooded quickly and cuts off the suburbs from the city. Hopefully, we’ve learnt a few lessons that 26/7 thought us. Cross fingers.

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  • Communicating my ideas

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://blogs.seds.org/pradeep. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on June 25, 2007 as per the timestamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    One of the things that I learnt at the meeting at ISRO Bangalore is how I lack the idea of communicating what I am doing to a group of people who may or may not know about space. In the end, it all comes down to communication.

    The bad part is I get only one chance.

    A guy to whom I tried to explain what being in SEDS entailed and who was not interested in it is not likely to listen to me a second time when I know a bit more and have a clearer picture of what I am saying than when I said it before. He’s already created a block against space thinking of it as very murky water. All thanks to me =(

    That has not happened yet and I hope it never will. It is one of the worries that a person who is trying to start a SEDS chapter might face. Startup fear?

    I am thinking about this and I am also simultaneously trying to solve this problem. But, my solving this problem won’t help others besides people in India since every country has a different outlook on space. India uses space as a means of self-reliance and telecommunications. We don’t want to rely on NASA pictures all the time :).

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  • Quick Long Update

    I returned from Kerala on the 17th. And there has been no blog posts since then. So, that needs some explanation.

    Stuff that I did –

    • Changed the theme to Unsleepable by Ben Gray
    • Read all the emails
    • Read all the blog posts
    • Updated Orkut and Facebook. Still catching up on that front.
    • Trying to get back into SEDSAT2

    So, in between all that, I didn’t have time to update my blog. Sorry. Had tons to write about. Forgot all of it. Sorry :(.

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